This Annual Report reviews the health of the wireline telecommunications networks for the
year 2004, as determined by statistical analysis of major outages reported by service providers to the
FCC. This analysis is intended to advise the various stakeholders of the telecommunications industry
on the network reliability results that were observed during the previous year from a very special
perspective. While any individual company can analyze their own major outage events, only the
NRSC brings the industry together in a non-competitive setting to objectively analyze the macro
outage data for the United States wireline telecommunications industry, and when necessary,
cooperatively bring to bear the industry’s resources when problems are identified. The statistical
analysis techniques employed by the NRSC are objective methodologies that were developed and
approved by the ANSI accredited ATIS Standards Group on Network Reliability and Performance.
These techniques provide many benefits.